The meaning of the word Meme has changed quite a bit since it became part of popular culture a few years ago. For people such as myself interested in evolutionary biology and related fields as it has served to blur the understanding of a very tricky topic. When Dawkins, somewhat casually introduced the term towards the end of The Selfish Gene he did so as an analogue to "gene". The idea was that whereas the gene was the carrier of genetic information a meme was an analogous carrier of cultural information. Dawkins gave the example of catchy snippets of songs as an example. The idea was just floated in the Selfish Gene and indeed Dawkins has largely left it to others such as Dan Dennett to flesh out the idea, notably in his suberb book Darwin's Dangerous Idea. The subsequent science of memetics has really not has much more of a spluttering start because of the inherent looseness of the concept. To my mind the concept is better seen as a foundational philosophical perspective. At heart a meme is a pattern. The concept of pattern is itself a very deep one only marginally appreciated in every day discourse. The perspective inevitably leads to a highly counterintuitive and indeed worrisome conclusion. That just as our bodies are ultimately mere survival vehicles for the mindlessly evolving pieces of genetic information we carry in each of our cells, our minds are de facto survival machines for these new self replicators our memes.